No Sudden Move, Steven Soderbergh’s new star-studded crime thriller, has earned nice critiques from critics. But the film additionally ended up educating me, an setting reporter, a chunk of vital air pollution historical past that I knew nothing about. To the, I’m certain many, film executives studying this weblog, hear up: I would like extra films like this, the place we will see inside automobile corporations’ nefarious schemes.

I’m not a Big Movie Guy, so that you’ll should go elsewhere for a grand cinematic analysis of the film, however I had a hell of time watching No Sudden Move. (FYI, medium-level spoilers for the film observe.) Don Cheadle and Benicio Del Toro play criminals residing in Detroit in 1954. They’re employed by a felony intermediary, performed by Brendan Fraser (!!), to do a job for a giant mob boss, a personality performed by Ray Liotta. They be a part of one other small-time criminal, performed by Kieran Culkin (Roman from Succession), to blackmail a General Motors worker performed by David Harbour (Hopper from Stranger Things) by holding his household hostage till he does what they need: steal a mysterious doc from inside his boss’s protected at GM. The plot advances from there: There are double-crossings, weapons, Jon Hamm as a cop, plenty of driving round in fantastically fashionable outdated vehicles, and Matt Damon in a late act, uncredited function as a baddie working for the auto business.

One factor No Sudden Move doesn’t provide an excessive amount of of is exposition. There’s an entire lot of character backstory and narrative that Soderbergh appears to belief the viewers to choose up by itself. This applies each to the broad strokes of the plot—we’re by no means fairly certain why everyone seems to be so panicked over the doc within the protected, and it doesn’t actually matter to the principle storyline—in addition to the wealthy historic context of the movie. In one scene, Don Cheadle’s character is talking with an outdated good friend, who mentions a neighborhood that was destroyed. It took a little bit of livid Googling throughout a pause on my finish to determine that the character is referencing the destruction of Black Bottom, a traditionally Black neighborhood that was torn down in an notorious act of racist “urban renewal.”

My ears briefly perked up within the fourth act when Matt Damon’s character stated there was ”no conclusive proof” that there’s any hyperlink between vehicles and air pollution. I figured it was one other line so as to add historic coloration to the film, given the period portrayed within the film pre-dates many environmental legal guidelines. But as the tip credit roll, a title card tells the viewer that years after the film’s fictional story ended, the Department of Justice sued large automakers for colluding to maintain air pollution management know-how out of their vehicles.

The mysterious doc within the protected that everybody was preventing over, we’d seen earlier, was a blueprint for a air pollution management gadget. Turns out, all of the motion I had simply watched was a results of automobile corporations scrambling to not let their analysis grow to be public—which might have compelled them to wash up their act, nearly definitely saving lives within the course of. It was a fictional story, certain, however grounded in historic reality.

I report on local weather, air pollution, and company sneakiness for my job, so it actually blew my thoughts that I didn’t know extra about this significant piece of air pollution historical past. I made a decision to perform a little digging (whereas watching the film once more).

In 1969, DOJ sued GM, Ford, Chrysler, American Motors Corp., and the Automobile Manufacturers Association of America—the commerce group for auto corporations—alleging that way back to 1953, these corporations had agreed to not compete with one another in growing air pollution management units for his or her vehicles. The swimsuit additionally claimed the automakers had agreed to not promote any vehicles with pollution-reducing know-how earlier than sure dates that the group set. This settlement, the swimsuit alleged, meant that air pollution controls in sure fashions might have been put in years earlier than they started to be placed on vehicles within the mid-Sixties. That might have saved untold lives and decreased the general public well being impacts of air air pollution in cities, significantly the heavy burden on communities of coloration.

Understanding why automobile corporations would collude to not make the air cleaner wants just a little little bit of context. Starting within the early Forties, smog was turning into a persistent city public well being downside. Los Angeles and different cities noticed an growing variety of days the place smog brought on low visibility and stung folks’s eyes. (There are some wild photos from that time of individuals biking or strolling down the road in full gasoline masks.) Research begun in California within the late Forties started to definitively link smog to exhaust from automobile engines.

Faced with this mounting proof, automobile corporations doubled down on denial and claimed that the science was fallacious, and that exhaust from vehicles wasn’t that unhealthy. A Ford government wrote to a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1953 claiming that exhaust from vehicles did “not present an air-pollution problem,” a line that almost mirrors Damon’s in No Sudden Move.

Still, automakers wanted to do one thing to avoid wasting their public picture and stave of rules. Between 1953 and 1954, large automobile corporations agreed to kind a committee to analysis the difficulty and develop air pollution management know-how; executives pledged after a go to to Los Angeles that every firm would dedicate $1 million for analysis per yr. But the DOJ lawsuit alleged that that settlement served as a canopy for the businesses to really work collectively to stall analysis on air air pollution management. According to paperwork obtained by a grand jury within the lawsuit, a supervisor at DuPont Chemical wrote in a memo in 1959 that the large automakers weren’t “interested in making or selling devices … but are working solely to protect themselves against poor public relations and the time when exhaust control devices may be required by law.”

The DOJ lawsuit ended up falling apart in a reasonably messy approach. It was filed simply because the Nixon administration was coming into energy. The auto business had an excellent lawyer who managed to dealer a settlement that additionally, conveniently, sealed proof uncovered by the grand jury and prevented the general public on the time from listening to about what was actually happening. A few follow-up lawsuits from states making an attempt to carry automakers accountable had been tossed out by courts. By the beginning of the Nineteen Seventies, automakers had turned their consideration to lobbying against the Clean Air Act, which mandated that they put air pollution management know-how in vehicles; finally, the antitrust swimsuit was largely forgotten from public reminiscence.

Watching No Sudden Move once more, it actually blew my thoughts that there haven’t been extra films that place carmakers as unhealthy guys—or at the very least present their scheming for what it truly is. There’s a seemingly countless provide of historic fodder of company malfeasance. Car corporations continued to combat the federal government tooth and nail for many years on air pollution controls, with loads of accompanying scandals and schemes alongside the best way (Dieselgate, anyone?). As No Sudden Move exhibits, automobile corporations could make phenomenal film villains or nefarious, behind-the-scenes company puppeteers.

They’re tailored for the function, with shadowy executives prepared to place revenue above the general public good, lies, large cash at stake, and extra. They’re principally the Joker of companies. But texting with a good friend who writes about vehicles for a residing, the one film we might give you that showcased carmakers’ full talents for company fuckery was a Michael Moore documentary about how GM stifled the electrical automobile. Meanwhile, Vin Diesel continues to explode Dodge Chargers as soon as each couple of years on the large display screen like clockwork. (The Fast & Furious franchise is a responsible pleasure of mine, however there’s no denying it’s its personal type of pro-car propaganda.)

As No Sudden Move exhibits, you don’t have to hammer the viewers over the pinnacle with morality or outrage to show folks about how companies have ruined the setting and public well being, or select between making a thriller or an academic film. You could make a enjoyable crime romp whereas additionally highlighting an vital piece of air pollution historical past. And if Brendan Fraser is in it, even higher.